In recent years, various types of mobile terminal apparatuses such as cellular phones have been developed and used. In addition to straight-type mobile terminal apparatuses having a stick shape, folding-type mobile terminal apparatuses openable and closable by a hinge part have been variously developed as the mobile terminal apparatuses.
The folding-type mobile terminal apparatuses have an upper housing having a display part, a lower housing having an operation part, and a hinge part openably and closably coupling the upper housing and the lower housing so that the display part and the operation part face each other. The folding-type mobile terminal apparatus has a structure in which the upper housing and the lower housing rotate relative to each other on an axis of the hinge part to be folded.
Accordingly, the hinge part has a substantially cylindrical shape and has an outer diameter larger than a thickness of the upper housing or a thickness of the lower housing having the display part or the display part, in general.
Thus, the hinge part protrudes from an upper surface of the upper and lower housing (for example, see Patent Document 1).
For this folding-type mobile terminal apparatus, a case that a user who has long nails operates the operation part, tips of the nails would interfere with the protruding hinge part, and it might be difficult to operate the operation part well.
Consequently, providing a desirable distance between the operation part and the hinge part is considered to be one option to allow the user with long nails to easily operate the operation part.
However, when such a desirable distance is provided between the operation part and the hinge part, total housing length from the upper housing to the lower housing also increases to cause an increase in size of the apparatus.
Further, since an extendable antenna should be mounted in one of the upper and lower housings, it is also one factor to suppress downsizing of the folding-type mobile terminals.
A characteristic of the antenna is suitably supplied by making the antenna extendable.
Therefore, for example, there is proposed a folding-type mobile terminal apparatus in which a coupling part coupling the upper housing having the display part and the lower housing having the operation part is formed in a shape of a foldable strip thinner than the upper or lower housing (for example, see Patent Document 2).
However, even in the folding-type mobile terminal apparatuses disclosed in Patent Document 2, as the antenna is mounted in one of the upper housing and the lower housing, that is one reason to suppress downsizing of the folding-type mobile terminal apparatus.
To solve the problem, there is known a folding-type mobile terminal apparatus 100 shown in FIGS. 8(a) and 8(b).
In the folding-type mobile terminal apparatus 100, a first housing 101 having the display part is coupled with a second housing 102 having the operation part by a coupling part 103, a first board 104 is provided in the first housing 101, a second board 105 is provided in the second housing 102, an antenna part 106 is mounted within the coupling part 103, and the first housing 101, the second housing 102, and the coupling part 103 are covered with a protective cover 108.
The antenna part 106 is built in the coupling part 103, whereby downsizing of the folding-type mobile terminal apparatus 100 can be achieved.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Publication No. JP 2001-45123A
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Publication No. JP 5-259656A